Under-fire Ghana Black Satellites coach, Jimmy Cobblah has attributed his side’s inability to qualify out of the group stage at the 2019 Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations to inadequate preparations.
Ghana managed a win and two loses which were not enough to see them progress to the semi-finals.
Cobblah’s charges won 2-0 against neighbours Burkina Faso in their first group game before losing 2-0 to group leaders Senegal.
The Satellites needed at least a draw to continue to be in the tournament and also secure a place at this year’s Fifa U-20 World Cup at Poland in May, but suffered a 1-0 defeat to Mali.
Speaking in a post-match presser after the Mali showdown, Cobblah indicated there was no telepathic understanding between his players became he had fewer days for preparations and therefore, didn’t get a compact unit.
“We realized how preparation, competition is very important [sic]. As we all know, we don’t have competition in our country and it also affected us because we should have played with a lot of our local boys.
“When you look at teams that came [to U-20 Afcon], most of them are using their local boys. And because our boys are not match fit and there are no competitions in our country, we had to rely on our ‘professionals’ [foreign-based players] who are very young in Europe.
“And they couldn’t come so early. They had to come so late and we had no choice than to organize and bring them on board. We’ve learnt from this and believe in future, it will not be so.”
The Satellites have now failed to qualify for the World Cup on two consecutive occasions – 2017 and 2019.
By Daniel Osei
